Students at Ottawa’s private career colleges 'livid' over Ontario's new OSAP freeze

Kaitlynn Ford now squirms at the sound of her last name. Ontario’s current Premier Doug Ford may have won her vote in the last provincial election, but Ontario’s actions over the last month have put a stain on her own last name.

Just six weeks into her studies to become a paralegal, Ford learned that Ontario was not going to release the Ontario Student Assistance Program (OSAP) funding she had planned to rely on during her schooling at the Algonquin Careers Academy.

Ford stood in front of a small but packed classroom at the academy earlier this month and shared her new reality with her peers, staff members at the college and Liberal MPPs John Fraser and Tyler Watt. They were there for a press event and discussion at the private career college to speak with students impacted by the OSAP freeze.

“I can’t pay my rent for October,” Ford said, her voice quavering. She added: “I don’t know how I am going to do it for November.”

The room fell into deep silence. After loosing both of parents in the last decade, Ford said she gave up a 52-hour per week job in her late 30s to pursue a career as a paralegal.

“We’re not just frustrated and upset and stressed-out,” Ford went on. “We’re livid.”

Ford is one of the students in Ottawa facing the same grim reality at one of 26 similar private career colleges registered in Ottawa. The provincial government announced earlier it would not send OSAP money to any privately run career college, citing instances of fraud. The province has promised colleges could regain access to that funding if they met strict new eligibility requirements, but has not announced what those requirements are.

Christine Vlaming, also a student in the paralegal program at the college, said she is quitting school to make ends meet.

Speaking in front of the crowd, Vlaming said the OSAP freeze is putting an important program, which would help fill an important gap in legal services across the city and province, in jeopardy.

“I had enough savings to get through September until now,” Vlaming said. “But I do not have the ability now, so I’m going to have to stop school and look for a full-time job, because part-time can’t pay the bills.”

For Vlaming, working full-time while studying would be impossible while also supporting a dependent at home.

“I just wanted to say that these are not grants, I’m going to be responsible for these loans to pay off,” she said. “This is not taxpayer money that’s being given to us. We’re investing in our own education, we’re just asking for the support.”

The decision comes as a shock, Vlaming said, because the OSAP funding was cancelled weeks after the start of their programs.

“It’s like pulling the rug from under us,” she said. “For me and my fellow students, that is not fair.”

The province announced Oct. 6 that all OSAP payments to students enrolled in private post-secondary institutions had been suspended.

The move came after the province shared its concerns regarding fraudulent activity at some private post-secondary institutions in the province. The Ontario government said it had red-flagged an increasing number of complaints “about the growing volume of OSAP applications at private career colleges” as early as 2024.

Subsequently, in May 2026, six private career college campuses learned they would not be eligible for OSAP from Ontario’s Colleges, Universities, Research Excellence and Security ministry, who had issued notices of non-renewal for OSAP to those institutions.

Minister Nolan Quinn says the OSAP pause would help restore the “integrity” of the financial aid program. Meanwhile, for students at private career colleges in Ottawa — none of which were among the bad actors the province identified — the ripple effects of the province’s blanket suspension has been slowly driving them into financial despair.

The move affects some 50,000 to 60,000 students attending private career colleges in the province, according to Henry Devlin the president of Willis College, a private career institution in Ottawa.

“This makes it a very scary time for our students,” Devlin said. “In that same breath, we as a sector need to work with the government and support its decision to eliminate bad operators. I think that’s really important.”

Algonquin Careers Academy president Des Soye said the college would support students by letting them continue their education without tuition fees for the time being.

“We’re committed to getting you through,” he said. “But committed doesn’t mean we have all the answers and can do it. But trust us on that.”

Soye acknowledged the limitations of the college’s offer to help. “We can’t pay your rent and we can’t buy your groceries. (The province) has put us in a position that’s impossible to solve if it goes on to long.”

Willis College has roughly 800 students, according to Devlin. He said the college is working with students of the 2026-27 academic year to find “creative payment plans,” but that future programs have been paused as a result of OSAP being suspended.

“We’re telling every student (that) as soon as we have clarity from the province on the options that are available for them for student aid, then we will communicate … and we will start those classes. But I think it’s irresponsible to start a class when we’re not quite sure is students are going to be able to afford it.”

“We need to look after students. We need to look after staff, and we need to be mindful and look after the employers that are looking for these graduates over the next year,” Devlin said.

The freeze doesn’t only impact tuition, it also impacts student’s cost of living, Watt, the Liberal party’s colleges critic, said.

“After tuition was paid, I had a couple hundred bucks left a month,” he said, speaking of his own experience with OSAP. “That’s before rent, before groceries, before transportation, internet, cell phone, textbooks let alone feeding yourself.”

Fraser, the interim leader of the party, called on the government to re-evaluate its decision.

“The government has taken a sledge hammer when they needed a scalpel to deal with the handful of community colleges that apparently took advantage in a large way,” he said to the classroom.

Meanwhile, Kaitlynn Ford said the province’s decision was not fair to those who were not a part of the “handful” of bad actors, that had their livelihood on the line, as Ontario continues to assess the broader integrity of OSAP applications at private postsecondary institutions through its independent third-party auditors.

“This is my biggest question: Why (is Ontario) punishing students of the 2026-27 graduating class for something that happened from (2024).”

“Why are we responsible for those actions that (Ontario) didn’t take sooner?”

Ford says this reality has only gotten worse.

“I had to miss school today,” Ford said in an interview on Oct. 15. “I was going to go to the food bank.”

With files from Postmedia

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